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It's me again. Just your reminder for universities and colleges that your ADA team is an inadequate route toward managing work accommodations during Fall 2020.
Too many people *will not* put themselves thru the ADA process and put themselves into risk for fear of losing their jobs or being doubted in their work bc of their disability status.
(And, the interactive process takes time, is not an efficient approach during a pandemic.)
(And, the interactive process takes time, is not an efficient approach during a pandemic.)
ADA also doesn't work for people whose families will be at risk. ADA is just for disabled people themselves. For employees with vulnerable people at home, ADA is not a route to accommodation for them. (It's just not written for a pandemic.)
We need 0 documentation policies so people can stay home to do their work, no questions asked. We should *incentivize* staying home for community health, rather than make people deal with arduous paperwork situations.
If this is about keeping the community health, and you care about protecting the most vulnerable at your work from death, and you care about your surrounding community, please please please make it easy and safe to stay home for your staff and faculty.
ADA wasn't built for a public health crisis. It's okay that it doesn't do that. But relying on it as your response to a public health crisis is a problem.
Plus most colleges and universities literally don't have large enough ADA teams to even do the work that is being laid on them bc disability services are often so underfunded. Too many people will fall through cracks if you set it on ADA.
Hearing from faculty + staff at a number of institutions that seem to think that ADA offices are an appropriate route for pandemic accommodations: but they just aren't.
Not to mention that so few ppl are disabled who make it into high admin that none knows what ADA entails.
Not to mention that so few ppl are disabled who make it into high admin that none knows what ADA entails.
It speaks volumes to me that so few administrators and bosses at universities are disabled - and so are absolutely clueless about how to go through ADA offices.
Everyone should also read @JayDolmage's Academic Ableism anyway, and currently OA -- https://www.press.umich.edu/9708836/academic_ableism
Everyone should also read @JayDolmage's Academic Ableism anyway, and currently OA -- https://www.press.umich.edu/9708836/academic_ableism
For administrators who would like to get a peek, UNC-Chapel Hill's landing page goes over some of the details -- obvious from the first that ADA won't handle non-disabled people with vulnerable family members to boot:
https://unc.policystat.com/policy/4468010/latest/
https://unc.policystat.com/policy/4468010/latest/
(They actually have a friendlier documentation forms than I've seen or filled out, but ADA is still not the right route here.)
